CENTRE FOR INNOVATION
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AT IIIT HYDERABAD
Fostering DeepTech Innovation
Cover story
Strengthening the Future of DeepTech Through Strategic Collaboration
At CIE IIIT Hyderabad, we were delighted to welcome George Paul, Head – Strategic Alliances & Partnerships, JioGenNext, and Anirudh Khusape, Chief Operating Officer, JioGenNext, for an engaging visit to our innovation ecosystem. The visit provided an opportunity to exchange ideas on the future of DeepTech, explore avenues for collaboration, and showcase how research-led innovation is driving the next generation of technology startups.
During their visit, the JioGenNext leadership interacted with eight startups across our incubation and acceleration programs. Founders presented their cutting-edge technologies, shared their entrepreneurial journeys, and discussed product innovation, commercialization, market readiness, and scaling strategies. The interactions highlighted the strength of CIE IIIT Hyderabad’s research-driven ecosystem in nurturing startups that are building solutions to address real-world challenges.
The discussions also focused on strengthening the innovation ecosystem through research commercialization, strategic industry partnerships, and collaborative initiatives that can accelerate the journey from breakthrough research to market impact. At CIE IIIT Hyderabad, we believe transformative innovation thrives at the intersection of research, entrepreneurship, and industry collaboration, and we look forward to building on these conversations to create greater opportunities for India’s next generation of DeepTech startups.
Happenings @ CIE
Mentor Cafe 34.0
The Mentor Cafe 34th edition brought together startups and experienced mentors from diverse domains for an engaging discussion on “Building Technology into Products that Create Value.”
The session encouraged founders to look beyond building great technology and focus on creating products that solve real user problems and deliver lasting value.
Through practical insights and interactive discussions, mentors shared how understanding customer needs, validating product-market fit, and continuously refining the product are essential to building successful startups.
Research Round Table
The fifth edition of the Research Round Table brought together researchers, startup founders, and innovators from IIIT Hyderabad for an engaging exchange of ideas and perspectives.
The conversation began with a simple yet thought-provoking question: Can Artificial Intelligence truly understand language? As the discussion unfolded, participants explored how language is more than just words—it carries culture, emotion, and context. The session highlighted why building better AI starts with understanding how people communicate. By the end of the session, one thing was clear: the next breakthrough in AI begins with understanding people.
Avishkar Venture Studio
The Avishkar Venture Studio Summer Cohort 2026 officially kicked off by welcoming five promising startups selected from over 110 applications received from across India.
Over the next six months, the selected startups will work closely with IIIT Hyderabad’s research faculty, mentors, and industry experts to transform their technologies into market-ready ventures.
Through research collaboration, expert mentorship, product development support, and market validation, the program will help founders build strong MVPs, refine their business strategies, and accelerate their journey from innovation to commercialization.
Spotlight
CIE IIIT Hyderabad’s Zenerative Minds secures major Seed Funding
CIE IIIT Hyderabad proudly celebrates another milestone as its incubated startup, Zenerative Minds, secures USD 2.26 million in Seed funding. The investment is a strong validation of the team’s vision and its work in developing sovereign AI solutions for defence, government, and enterprise applications.
As the startup enters its next phase of growth, the funding will support the development and deployment of secure, mission-critical AI technologies that address real-world challenges. This achievement reflects the strength of CIE’s innovation ecosystem in nurturing high-impact Deep Tech startups, and we congratulate the Zenerative Minds team on this well-deserved success.
Call For Applications
T-Health CafeT-Health Cafe is a program for early stage MedTech start-ups, budding entrepreneurs, professionals with a start-up idea and corporates exploring new products to discuss their problem statements and get solutions directly from domain experts.
Research CafeResearch Cafe offers selected startups exclusive 1:1 access to IIITH faculty to validate problems, explore research pathways, and strengthen their technical direction.
Early Stage EiR
CIE IIIT Hyderabad presents the Early-Stage EiR Startup Program, an opportunity for aspiring founders to transform their vision into an MVP-ready venture with funding, mentorship, market validation, and access to IIIT Hyderabad's research ecosystem.
In News
IIIT-H’s AI system helps Telangana Police automate traffic violation detection
IIIT Hyderabad has announced an AI-powered traffic enforcement system, VIOLA, developed by its Applied AI Research Centre (INAI) with support from iHub-Data, the institute’s Technology Innovation Hub. The system uses dashcams mounted on police patrol vehicles to detect traffic violations such as riding without a helmet, triple riding, and wrong-side driving. It also uses Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to identify vehicle registration numbers and integrates verified cases with the Telangana Police’s e-Challan system, helping make traffic enforcement faster and more efficient.
IIIT Hyderabad's study finds smaller AI models match brain research
Researchers at IIIT Hyderabad have challenged the long-held belief that larger language models are always better at modelling human brain activity. Presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2026, the study found that smaller and compressed AI models can perform almost as effectively as much larger models in predicting brain activity. The findings could make computational neuroscience research faster, more affordable, and less resource-intensive, while opening new possibilities for applications such as brain-computer interfaces.
Our
Impact
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15cr+
Invested in startups
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40+
Startup Research engagement
CIE at IIIT Hyderabad is a technology incubator with rich experience in seeding, nurturing, and growing deep-tech startups in emerging segments like med-tech, tech4social, visual informatics, data engineering, and machine learning, language technologies, gaming, and robotics. CIE IIITH, with a research-led innovation as its primary mandate, focuses on amplifying technology through research collaboration and co-creation models for startups to work with research groups at IIITH.
Under the CIE umbrella, there are 3 active incubators: the Deeptech incubator (Avishkar), the Medtech incubator (Ojas) & the Social incubator (AIC). CIE also includes enabling labs such as a well-equipped Maker Lab, a Medical Electronics Calibration Lab, and a AR/VR lab. IIIT Hyderabad also includes Product Labs to seed new products from research — a pre-incubation program to seed startups from research.
In the past 15 years we have grown to be the largest academic incubator in the country, have housed over 450+ startups that have raised about 250+Cr funding, and created over 2500+ jobs. Today there are very active programs focused on emerging technology startups, research-based startups, medical technologies, and social technology startups.
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